Keladry's Secret
by BlackboxStar
Summary: Keladry struggles with a secret...It's pretty dark but feel free to leave me love or hate.
1. Chapter 1

Credit where credit is due. Tamora Pierce owns these characters. They are hers, I just borrowed them for a bit. I got this idea from a work entitled 'a squire's pain'. It was an interesting idea that I had never seen before and I hope that the author does not mind if I jump off from there.

In a small bed in a lonely corner of the castle Keladry of Mindelan cried. She pressed her face against her odd looking dog's fur as he licked her forhead. In her mind, she felt the pressure. "Nobody likes a probationary _Lump!_" she sobbed. In her mind, she felt useless. She was overwhelmed by the amount of classwork she had been assigned. She had finished everything, but it was very late at night and she needed to sleep. If only she could stop crying.

Her mind jumped quickly from her desperate need for sleep, to the helplessness of probation, to the fear of failure, to the hurtful remarks of others, to her inability to succeed at tilting, and back to her need for sleep. With each loop her mind got more and more frantic and she cursed herself for being a bad Yamani.

As her crying became more desperate, she began to hyperventilate. Her head pounded getting worse by the minute only adding to her panic. Then, as though a light had switched, she threw back the covers. She stumbled to her desk madly opening drawers until she found what she sook. Her heart beat wildly as a tear dripped off of the end of her nose. She could not think straight. Her head hurt so terribly. She lifted her shirt and pressed the yamani folding blade against the skin of her hip. She hurriedly made a line across the broad part of the hip bone.

As the blood welled and slowly dripped she took a deep breath. The pounding in her head had slowed. She could now focus. She took her time on the next cut. The knife was dull enough that she needed to press fairly hard to draw blood. She liked it that way. By the time she actually saw the blood her skin had already formed angry welts which would soon stop the bleeding. Her skin prickled with the sensation. She made two more cuts on the other hip before she stopped feeling anything at all. She felt like her mind had been stuffed with cotton. Her headache was gone, all of the terrible emotions she had felt before ceased to matter. She felt like whatever happened, she was strong enough to handle it. She crawled back into bed and felt her mind drift off to easy and dreamless sleep.

When she awoke in the morning, Kel struggled to remember the events that had passed. She still felt as though someone had stuffed her brain full of cotton. Slowly, she remembered what she had done. She ran her hands over the four raw places on her hips to be sure. She gasped as she realized just how bad they were. She had not remembered that one of the cuts went all the way around her hip. It looked to be a hand's length. None were terribly deep, but they hurt when she sat up. She sighed. "What's done is done and cannot be undone." she quoted a Yamani proverb. "I mean it this time. I'm going to stop this." Jump wagged his tail seeming to agree with her.

The upside to being quiet all of the time is that, when you are exceptionally quiet, nobody notices. She was relieved that no one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary with her. Not that she'd ever been caught before. As the morning progressed, Kel felt the numb feeling slip away to be replaced by a terrible gnawing feeling of worthlessness. The two biggest feelings were the desire to turn into liquid and seep down into the flagstones, and the desire to cut again. She cursed her own weakness while keeping up her well-practiced Yamani mask.

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"I'll need your essays on the habits of stormwings by next class. You are dismissed." Sir Myles said, "Mindelan may I speak to you for a moment?"

Kel's heart skipped a beat as everyone else left. She felt naked without boys on either side fo her. She felt exposed. She did not notice the looks that Neal and the prince gave each other as they exited.

Myles shuffled papers on his desk seeming to be searching for something without looking at his hands. Kel stood in front of his desk waiting for him to speak.

"Thirty years as a teacher has taught me a thing or two about students. Well, that and living here at the palace for more years than I want to count. While I have no idea exactly what is bothering you, I do see that you are troubled. Please do not allow your problems to fester like an open wound." he said as Kel felt a blush creep up her face. He was much too close to the truth for comfort. "Should you require a friendly ear, I will listen. Should you choose instead to continue to struggle by yourself, know that your friends will worry about you. That is all, please go away."

Kel's feet took her from the room as her mind digested the words. As she headed to the practice courts she ran a hand across her hips making sure that everything was safely hidden.

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It seemed that day on the practice courts that the gods were laughing at her. Kel could not remember being hit on the hips before today, but it seemed like every blow that slipped by her defenses landed there. Riding Peachblossom hurt. Running up that dreadful hill to get to her room hurt, the hot water on her cuts hurt. All the while, Kel did her absolute best to dissapear. To evaporate, to melt. Anything but stay the way that she was. ANYTHING. That evening Kel climbed into bed wishing that she had not cut wishing that she had resisted. She cursed herself calling herself weak and useless before drifting off into nightmarish sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

A few nights later, as she lay in bed and thought about her day, Kel remembered things that had gone wrong. She remembered her shortcomings. She remembered the stinging remarks from Joren and his small posse. She remembered the feeling of inadequacy. Once again, she found herself on a downward spiral of hopelessness and despair. She worked herself into a panic once more before she began to tear through her desk drawer.

Once she had finished her ritual, she worked to calm her beating heart. She cleaned the knife, her old friend, then managed to drift off into sleep.

When Kel woke up, she had trouble remembering. "Did I do it again?" she asked Jump who 'woofed' in reply. Suddenly, the memory swamped her in a brilliant flashback. She remembered every detail and as the feeling of weakness overcame her, she used her fist to hit the stone wall in sheer frustration.

"OW!" She cried out. She shook her hand in pain. "Figures, not even a little dent." She growled at the contrary wall. "I hate you too."

Neal noticed her hand at breakfast that morning. "Did that giant monster come try to finish the job last night? Or were you wrestling centaurs?" He joked.

"Oh this?," she mumbled, "Yeah, I'll go with the centaurs." She added a laugh which sounded much less convincing than she had hoped.

"So…" Neal prodded, "No really, what happened?" His tone implied that he was half joking, his tone was light, but he was going to keep asking her until she answered.

Kel slammed the honeypot down. "I punched the wall ok? Are you happy? Next time, Neal, just mind your own business!"

As soon as she said it she regretted it. She saw the hurt on Neal's face and she wished to the goddess that she could take it back.

Prince Roald tried to make a joke, "So what you're saying is that you got into a fight with a wall and lost? That's not so far off from a centoar." He joked. Nobody laughed. After a minute Neal took his plates to the front to be cleaned, then strode from the hall.

Kel pressed a hand against her hips one minute too late. A flood of pain swept through her body like wildfire helping her to assume the role of a good Yamani. But not before a single tear leaked straight down the middle of one cheek. Thankfully, everyone pretended not to notice.

By etiquette Kel had exhausted the extent of the pain that could be milked from her preexisting cuts. She knew that she would need more to make it through the rest of the day. It had not helped that she had only half read the chapter and thus could not answer Master Oakbridge's barking question on Tiran bows before royalty. It also had not helped that Neal had sat several rows away from her and refused to look at her all class.

As class ended she slipped away hurrying toward her room. If she did things quickly she could make a few new lines to get her through staff lessons and tilting. The thought occupied her mind completely. She could think of nothing else. She did not notice that Nealan was following her.

Upon entering her room, she worked quickly and efficiently. She located her wonderful beautiful knife, then, sitting in her desk chair, moved the hem of her britches debating where to put new marks. She had quite a few of them already and she wasn't a fan of letting them criss-cross. She only had a few options left.

As the first crimson drop bloomed from the edge of her knife, the door was flung open to reveal Neal.

"Now I know I'm a nosy git but I think that there's something bothering you. You've always had this secret about you and it seems to be getting worse and the truth is WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU"RE DOING!" She had moved her hem back in place and hid the knife behind her back, but it was too late, he'd already seen more than he needed to see to understand the truth. He slammed the door hard before going to her. He looked her in the face for a minute before he deliberately reached behind her back forcing her arm forward. She did not bother resisting much. The look on his face was scary, yet unreadable at the same time.

He plucked the blade from between her fingers, folded it then set it on the desk. He pulled her to her feet and began examining her. First he pulled back her sleeves his hands feeling up her arms pausing on the faded lines that most people would never notice. They were worse on her upper arms. Then he pulled her shirt up revealing her stomach and her pants down revealing her hips and thighs. _It's funny,_ she thought, _he's practically got me naked and I feel completely exposed, but I'd still feel exposed no matter how clothed I was._ He did look in more places than would be deemed proper for a young noblewoman to be showing a young man. He checked her breasts and her womanly place, each time not even pausing to notice anything about them. Once he had looked at the scars on her hips and thighs, and at the new cuts on her hips, he checked her ankles.

"Neal, what the Hell are you doing?" She asked impatient. She wanted him to go away. She wanted to finish cutting and go to class.

"My father is a palace healer. He sees this thing in noblewomen all of the time. Last year, Dinanna of Hopskitch nearly killed herself when she nicked a vein. Her maid found her bleeding on the bed. But this kind of thing is actually pretty common amongst the pages and squires too. There was actually a book I read at the university that went into pretty extensive detail about-"

"Neal that doesn't answer the question." She snapped.

"Strictly speaking, I'm seeing whether or not you need my help or my father's help. And I'm seeing how bad it is. And I'm trying to remember why I didn't see it before. And I'm wondering why and how long and-"

"Neal, I can't answer all of those questions at once. I just can't. In fact, I want you to go away and not tell anyone about this. Not ever. Wyldon is going to be very upset when we are late." She said, her practicality was undermined by the tears leaking down her face, "Why did you have to come here? I never asked you to."

Neal picked her up like a damsel being saved from a dragon as she objected through her sniffles. "Here's what we're going to do. First thing's first, you're going to pretend to be passed out sick. I'm taking you to my father. And don't you dare try to object because you've now made me late to class and I already have punishment work to do. So, if you care about me, you'll do as I say and play along."

"You're just saying that." She accused.

"Well, I really would rather not do punishment work, but yes, I am mostly just saying that. Anyways, time for you to act very very sick. And just think, if you spend the whole walk arguing, everyone will see that you have been crying." He said.

"I officially hate you. You know that right?"

"As a matter of fact I do." He said as he carried her into the hall.


	3. Chapter 3

Well, as I read through my last chapter I couldn't help but see some small things that needed changing. I know several people have this story subscribed so i didn't want to be a tease.

I know that this is an incredibly sensitive topic to many people. The aim of this story is to illustrate to those who can't understand why people self-injure what drives it. And also to give a balanced honest to God truth about cutting so that people who are considering it can fully understand the consequences. And also, for those who are caught in the cycle of self-injury, to let them know that they are not alone, and that they can beat this.

I welcome your comments, but please resist ignorant and/or hurtful words. You can say I think your story is crap and I wouldn't even let my ginea pig poop on it, but please don't call people names or alienate them. Not here.

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As she hid her face against Neal's chest, he carried her through the halls. Kel cried. She was conflicted inside. She'd been cutting for four years. She had always wished that someone cared enough to notice. She'd always wished that someone would take the time to find out her secret. Then again, the first and foremost effort in everything that she did was to hide it. She knew that if she was found out, people would try to stop her, people would make fun of her. She did not want that. She was scared.

"Hey, Queenscove! Is that Mindelan?" Kel recognized the voice of the prince. She held her breath, not sure if Neal would give away her secret.

"Yeah, she's real sick. Can you tell the Stump that I found her passed out in her room and I am taking her to my father?"

"Mithros! Is she all right?"

"I think so, she's still breathing just fine, but my father will know better. I gotta go." Kel felt Neal begin to move again and after a moment she released her breath.

She cursed Neal silently in her mind. She should be floating on an emotionless cloud right now. She should be doing her best impression of a rock. Not moving, not speaking, just sitting. This is how things were supposed to go. She was not supposed to be carried across the palace heart pounding, eyes leaking, so that she could be _healed._

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Neal's father was studying an oversized book when Neal deposited her in a chair in his office then shut and locked the door.

The old healer looked up and raised his eyebrows at his son. "If you tell me that she is pregnant I'll kill you." He said. Kel blushed but could not bring herself to say anything.

"No, stop joking around, this matter is serious." Neal said. Kel felt detached from her body as she wondered to herself if he enjoyed the rare moment to chastise his father.

"Well what seems to be the trouble?"

"Kel..." Neal prodded. She looked up at him in desperation. _Please. Please don't make me do this._ He simply looked at her. That same, unfeeling look on his face.

She took a deep breath. "Um....I uh. I um feel....I, when I....umm......" She choked on each word as she tried to get it out. Tears rolled down her face until eventually, ignoring the pain in the creases of her hips, she drew her knees to her face and sobbed into them. Each sob racked her body violently. She could soon feel the wetness from her tears on the top of each knee.

Neal pressed a cool and comforting hand the back of her neck, gently smoothing away the damp hair. With his other hand he gripped her shoulder as he explained quietly. "I found her in her room, cutting herself."

And with that, the secret that no one had ever heard, no one, had been said aloud. Keladry could do nothing but sob. Neal sat down in a chair and pulled her shoulders to his chest. Gratefully, Kel obliged. Her knees slid to the floor as she once again cried into his shirt.

As she slowly calmed down in the comfort of Neal's strong arms she gradually became aware of Duke Baird's movements about the room as he gathered a few things. When he came back to his desk he had a folder with her name on it and a few blank forms.

"I need to do a few things Kel, then we can discuss where to go from here." He said.

Kel's mind raced. Visions of being sent home by Lord Wyldon flooded her mind complete with Joren and Vinson there to mock her.

She was led from the office into the examination room.

"First Kel I'm going to need to see how bad this is. How bad exactly. Now, how long has this been going on?"

"Four, maybe five years." Details were surprisingly cloudy. She could remember doing it for the first time, but she couldn't remember exactly when.

He marked on one of the forms. "How often?"

"Umm....I don't know." She couldn't remember. She racked her brain. She remembered doing it. She remembered running out of room for new cuts. She couldn't remember how often, though. "I wanna say only a few times, but I know it has to have been more than that."

"Where?"

"I started on my arms, but I didn't want people to see, so I tried other places. I mostly stick to the hips now. That way nobody sees."

"All right, I know this sounds odd, but I want you to undress. I can send Neal away if you'd rather."

"No, he already looked everywhere so it doesn't really matter now. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather he stayed." He squeezed her hand encouragingly.

As she stood completely naked in front of the duke's examining eye, Neal was careful to look just about everywhere else. The Duke seemed to know without asking all of the places that she had cut before. He found the old scars on her wrists, the ones on her upper arms and shoulders, the ones underneath her breasts, the ones on her stomach, the ones on her hips, the ones on her thighs, and the ones on her ankles. He marked each of these places on a piece of paper with an outline of a person. Once she was dressed again, the duke settled her and Neal into a big comfy chair, sat in the one across from it, and began to speak.

"In recent years, we've found more and more young people who are doing this. They injure themselves on purpose. Most of the healers are baffled by it. There are quite a few theories, many of them are absolute nonsense. Truth is, we as adults have a lot of trouble understanding this. Here at the palace, it is very crucial that we not only understand what is happening and why, but that we work to identify what is going on early so that we can help. We've been working with the masters to identify the warning signs, but because of your Yamani background, we never caught those signs. I am sorry."

She struggled to understand what he was saying. The one main point that stuck out in her mind was that she was not alone. She wasn't the only one!

He continued, "What you do, is a way for you to cope. It seems to work, you will come to understand that it really doesn't. It also disrupts your life, but you won't see that yet either. What you need to know for now is that it's time for this to stop. Today. I can't tell you the number of pages, squires, and young ladies I've had brought in here who were dying of this. We actually have lost a few in the past few years. As Neal's friend, I refuse to allow you to be one of them. Now, let me heal your cuts."

She found her voice in a hurry. "No! Please, no." She begged as he moved her clothes away from the angry red lines. "I need them. Please don't heal them." She sobbed.

"Kel, look, you cut yourself too deep. It'll take too long to heal this way. Be reasonable and let me heal you up." Baird insisted.

She finally nodded and hid her face in Neal's chest as she felt her skin knit itself back together. She did not realize until it was too late that he was also using magic to make her sleep. Neal caught her as she fell over.

"Take her back to her room and stay there with her. I have to tell Wyldon that she was sick today."

"You aren't going to tell him are you?"

"Not yet, eventually he will need to know, but not yet. She can keep her secret for just a little longer. Be there when she wakes up. When she finds all of her cuts healed she'll try to make new ones."

"I've done this before, you know." Neal was a little miffed. He couldn't count the number of times he had been charged with keeping a person from themselves.

"Yes, but never before with someone so close to you. We all gave her more credit than she could bear. I just don't want to do that twice." the duke explained.

Neal nodded before carrying his friend back to her room.


	4. Chapter 4

Kel came to slowly. Her mind seemed foggy and her stomach seemed empty. As she woke, she wondered why she felt so odd. Then, suddenly, something clicked in her mind. She lifted her shirt to find lightly scarred skin where there should have been a myriad of scars.

Kel swore in Yamani. She rained the heaviest curses from the gods upon the duke and upon Neal. She stumbled out of bed and went to her desk. Her knife was gone.

She opened the lower drawer of the desk locating the smaller, more discreet knife that she had hidden there "for emergencies". Pulling back her clothing, she began.

Neal walked out of the privy just as Kel began the first line across her skin. He sprinted to her and wrestled the blade away. Kel fought him, she bruised him in her attempts to hold onto sanity. The chair was knocked over and once the blade was retrieved, Kel attacked Neal out of anger. She hit him in the chest over and over and over. She cursed him in both languages as tears streamed openly down her face. After a few minutes, she no longer felt angry.

The anger left quickly leaving in its wake a helpless feeling. Kel wanted to run, to hide, to escape. She wanted nothing more than to be alone and away from her friend. She was unsure whether Neal would forgive her for calling him such terrible names and she wished that she could find a way to tell him that she had not meant it. At least not the way that it came out.

Her face gave away the storm of emotions within. Her lower lip trembled for a moment before sank to the floor beside her bed and covered her face with her hands. She felt so conflicted inside. What she wanted was for Neal to just leave her alone, but she also wanted Neal to give her a big hug and tell her that he still wanted to be her friend. She wanted him to say, I understand or even I used to do the same thing. She needed something from him, but she really wasn't sure what.

Whatever she wanted or needed, she was sure that he would hate her forever. She had put all of her strength into the blows that she had rained down upon him. He would bruise. He would most certainly never talk to her again, and he would probably tell everyone her embarrassing secret.

As she struggled not to cry, Neal knelt down in front of her and moved her hands away from her face. "I know you're angry with me." He said. "It's understandable, I guess. I've seen it before. But I've never had such a close friend hurting like this. I guess I wasn't prepared for this."

"How many others have there been?"

"A dozen or so. I usually get put on babysitting duty. I have quite a bit of experience stopping young noblewomen from cutting. Their maids, however, are much more difficult to stop." He said.

"Why" she asked. The redness slowly leaked away from her face as her mind found something else to be interested in.

"Maids are sneaky. They're good at lying and better at hiding things. Noblewomen are stupid. Once you take away their little knife they tend to run out of ideas. I've stopped maids from using needles, nails, and even broken glass before. Maids also tend to cut deeper although nobody is quite sure why. Noblewomen also seem to want to be caught and to want to get better. Maids don't want to get better."

A knock sounded on Kel's door. Neal looked a little worried. "Ask who it is." He whispered to her.

Kel obliged and heard the sound of Duke Baird's voice through the door. Neal quickly got up and went to the door.

*

"A word?" His father asked.

"I can't leave just yet, she's not ready." Neal hissed.

"Son, a word, now." The duke demanded quietly.

In the hall, Neal paced nervously with an eye to the door. Given a few minutes alone, he wasn't sure that Kel wouldn't reach for another blade right away. After a minute of silence he looked angrily at his father.

"You already know how this ends, son. Sometimes they don't want to get better yet. Sometimes they're just not ready. We've given the encouraging speech, we've checked her out to make sure she isn't seriously hurting herself. At this point, if she really wants to do it, there really isn't any way to stop her."

"No! I refuse to believe that. Kel is better than this. She is stronger than this." He argued softly.

"It's not a matter of better or of strength. People just stumble sometimes and sometimes they keep stumbling. It's not any different from the way alcoholics fall. It quickly spirals out of control and they never realize that they are a slave. And you should know from Sir Myles that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped."

"So what? I just stand here and watch her self destruct? Just watch her fall apart?" Neal demanded in a hurt tone.

"Unfortunately, it's all we really _can_ do. She is stubborn and there really is no way to force her to be better. She will realize it eventually."

"What if I tell her that I won't be her friend if this continues. It'll give her a good reason to stop."

"You know better. Your friendship will not survive a stunt like that. Tell her that you care. Tell her that you don't like it, but that no matter what happens, you will always be there for her. Even when she is hurting. Even when part of that hurt is self inflicted."

As the Duke walked away, Neal slammed Kel's door. Kel sat on her bed. She floated on a cloud of apathy from the new cuts on her hip. A pin hidden under her bed had been her savior. She had used it to scratch a few shallow lines into her hip which were now safely hidden under layers of clothing.

Neal took one look at her and he knew that she had found a way. It was in the blank and far-off look in her eyes. It was in the way she did not blink and they way she did not move. He turned on one heel and marched from the room. His room was thanfully far enough away that Kel did not hear the screaming and breaking that would occur when he got there.


End file.
